Trials of climate-resilient hops amid sustainability fears for British beer

FARMERS, brewers and merchants have been giving trials to new varieties of organic hops that are resilient to climate change, amid concerns over the future of British-grown beer ingredients.

A group of cross-industry researchers have been developing crops over the last three years that can be grown organically in warmer temperatures and are more resilient to diseases.

The Innovative Farmers’ Hop Trial aims to bolster the UK’s cultivation of hops, which provide more flavour to beer on top of the base malt, after decades of declining production.

The traditional non-organic varieties grown in the UK, like Fuggle and Goldings, are under increasing stress from issues like climate change, disease and insects, and low nitrogen availability. They have also seen a fall in demand due to changing consumer tastes towards tropical flavours produced by hops imported from the United States and elsewhere.

Greg Pilley, managing director of Stroud Brewery, in Gloucestershire, said that growing more climate change-resistant organic hops in the UK could supply farmers with a high quality, sustainable crop.

“The underlying issue is climate change – our weather is changing,” he said. “UK summers are becoming wetter and more humid and less reliable, and it’s making hop growing more challenging.”

Growing trials on two farms in East Sussex and Worcestershire have identified five varieties of hops that showed promise in coping with higher temperatures and increased disease resistance. After being harvested, Stroud Brewery used them to create new beers, which were recently put to a tasting trial in its taproom to assess their suitability for commercial beermaking.

Industry specialists said Harlequin, a hop that is already conventionally grown but had not been produced in an organic setting, and newer varieties, Endeavor and 302, had particular potential.

They said these had not only shown higher resilience to disease but produced exciting flavours, with notes such as “pineapple”, “strawberry laces”, “blackcurrant”, “spice” and “lemon”.

Tom Upton, from Woodlands Farm, in East Sussex, said that the development work could have bigger implications for the British industry as a whole.

“The day is rapidly approaching whereby conventional growers will either have to go out of business or they will have to adapt to growing in a manner perhaps similar to a way that we do now,” he said.

“So it’s an important project, not just for a very niche organic market but for the hops industry in general, where it will have to adapt to some of practices that we are pioneering.”